New position to advance knowledge and mission through strategic collaboration

The Wikimedia Foundation is pleased to welcome Kourosh Karimkhany as Vice President of Strategic Partnerships on March 30, 2015. In this newly created role, Kourosh will initiate, maintain, and grow strategic relationships and partnerships that advance the Wikimedia mission, support the community, and increase access to knowledge globally.

Today, Wikipedia attracts nearly half a billion visitors and more than 20 billion page views each month. At the same time, hundreds of millions of people interact with data and content from the Wikimedia projects on third party platforms and properties. Our mission is to make the sum of all human knowledge freely available to the world, and content distribution and sharing play a key role in that process.

The Wikimedia Foundation has created this new strategic role to identify and manage these opportunities, and convert some of them into sharing and distribution partnerships in order to advance our mission. Kourosh joins us in this senior leadership role to craft a partnership strategy and create long-term value for Wikimedia projects through partnerships, projects, and relationships.

“Our aim is to empower people around the world with knowledge,” said Lila Tretikov, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation. “To fulfill that goal, we need to think creatively about opportunities to work with like-minded organizations. Kourosh will help us focus on our continued service to our community and users, and progress toward our mission.”

As Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, Kourosh will oversee the Wikimedia Foundation’s partnership strategy, including Wikipedia Zero, a partnership-based project. Wikipedia Zero is designed to increase access to knowledge for people around the world. Applying additional focus to that work and orienting it within a larger partnerships strategy will help us work more effectively to achieve our mission.

The many fruitful and creative partnerships the Wikimedia community has already built to support knowledge creation and sharing around the world will be better supported as a result of this change. The partnerships group will help us identify the strategic initiatives we must take on at the WMF and increase our ability to support the movement and mission.

Kourosh is an experienced digital media executive. He started his career as a technology journalist covering Silicon Valley for Bloomberg, Reuters and Wired. He switched to the business side of media when he joined Yahoo as senior producer of Yahoo News. Later, he was the head of corporate development at Conde Nast where he spearheaded the acquisition of Wired.com, Ars Technica and Reddit. He also cofounded Food Republic in 2009, which was acquired in 2013. He is an active angel investor and startup advisor.

Kourosh will report to Chief Advancement Officer Lisa Gruwell under the newly created Advancement Department. To learn more about these changes, please see our FAQ.